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Maple Hill Cemetary Stroll, 5/7/06 Gov Clement Clay ..............................N Walker

Rob Henshaw portrays Clement Claiborne Clay (1817-1882) who was a lawyer, member of the Alabama Legislature and US & Confederate States Senator. He was charged with complicity in the murder of President Lincoln and imprisoned with President Jefferson Davis at Ft. Monroe.

Mary Louise Stowe is seen here as Virginia Clay-Clopton (1823-1915). Virginia was the widow of Clement Claiborne Clay and wife to Judge David Clopton. She wrote "Belle of the Fifties" and was active in the Women's Suffrage Movement.

Clay was born with a strong political predigree; he was the son of Clement Comer Clay, a former senator and governor of Alabama, and was a third cousin of Henry Clay. Clement Clay attended the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and graduated in 1834. He obtained a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1839 and was admitted to the bar in Alabama in 1840. He was a member of the Alabama State House of Representatives in 1842, 1844, and 1845. He then became a county judge in Madison County, Alabama and served from 1848 to 1850. He then ran for a seat in the United States Congress in 1850, but was not elected. He was elected and served in the United States Senate from November 29, 1853 to January 21, 1861. He withdrew from the senate as Alabama seceded from the Union. He was subsequently elected Senator in the First Confederate Congress and served from 1861 until 1863.

Due to suspicions that he was involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe in 1865, where he stayed for about a year. He died in Madison County and is interred at Maple Hill Cemetery.